House Of Vampires 3 (The Lorena Quinn Trilogy)

by Samantha Snow

  I was so startled when a hand slid over my shoulder that I screamed. I don't scream often, not unless there are roller coasters or spiders involved, but I totally screamed then. I scampered off the chair and along the side of the bed. The popcorn I had been munching flew everywhere.

  A man stood at the foot of the bed. It was Vlad, but he didn't look the same as he had at dinner, however long ago that was. His hair had been brushed until it shone in waves around his face. It softened the angles, made him look more approachable. His big dark luminescent eyes looked down at me with charmed amusement. He wore a red robe, and the neckline plunged low enough that I was pretty sure he wasn't wearing much beneath it. Suddenly being on the bed seemed like a bad idea.

  I jumped out of it and backed away. I didn't stop until my back met wall.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I demanded, even though it was a stupid question. I had a really good idea what he was doing here. I just didn't want it to be true. “What do you want?”

  His smile was slow, seductive, and filled with a charm I hadn't totally expected. He stayed where he was, standing next to the bed. The pale pink sheets didn't look half so sweet with him there.

  “I have come to you.” He made the words sound rich.

  “Nope.” It was the first word that came to mind, and the first one that came out of my mouth, but it didn't cover the extent of my feelings. “That's a hard pass. One hundred percent no. Not gonna happen.”

  He reached a hand out to me. He did it slowly, with the kind of elegant muscle control that a human just didn't have. I could watch every single movement of muscle. It was strangely hypnotic. The fingers were long and pale, and the unfolded like a fan towards me. The tips of them decorated with nails long and sharp enough that I knew that they could cut. He turned the palm over, offering it to me. I glared.

  “Does the word no mean nothing to you?”

  His smile was nothing but charm. I could hear the laughter in his words when he said, “it is not a word I hear often.”

  “Yeah, I bet when you surround yourself with nothing but simpering brides and doting daughters it isn't.” I rolled my eyes. “Sorry, I'm not interested in a dude who can't take criticism.”

  He laughed, and it was so rich and warm that I felt it dance over my skin. “It has been a long time since a woman has turned me down so genuinely. I find it intoxicating.”

  I made a face. “Are you serious? That's...okay that's like really gross. Hearing a girl tell you no is a turn on? What kind of creep are you? Wait.” I held up a finger. “You know what? Don't tell me. I don't need to know. You are creepy. I got it.”

  He frowned now, and he didn't look half so charming. “You do not find me intriguing?”

  I tried my best not to laugh. He was being absolutely serious. “Dude, some chicks go for that over assertive, alpha male “you know you want me” thing. That's their choice. Me? I'm not big on overconfidence. And all this.” I waved a hand up and down to encompass his body. “This is nothing but overconfidence.”

  His face went carefully blank. It reminded me a little of Alan when he was trying to hide something. I think I had offended him. “I wish to seduce you.”

  I did my best not to roll my eyes, but it took everything in me not to. “You made that absolutely clear. To be honest you came on a little strong when you announced to an entire table of your sons, daughters, and wives that that was your intent. And you did it at the supposed funeral dinner of the guy I love.”

  “It bothers you that I am honest with them?” He withdrew his hand as slowly as he had extended it, and despite the fact that I was boiling with anger it was still interesting to watch.

  Okay, this time I totally rolled my eyes. “Honesty is fantastic, revealing private information? That's just crappy.”

  “You believe seduction should be a private matter.”

  I dragged a hand down my face. It was like I was trying to train a puppy. A tall, undead, thousand-year-old puppy. “That is just the tip of the iceberg here, but yes. Seduction should be a private matter. But you are missing the point. I don't want you to seduce me.”

  He eyed me, clearly not understanding my issues here. “I am very pleasant company.”

  “Dude, you have greatly overestimated your charms.”

  “Do you not want me?”

  “No,” I said as flatly as I could. “I don't. I'm sorry. I don't have time for the gentle let-down here. But I'm just not interested.”

  He frowned at me. “I have never had a woman so determinedly say no.”

  I shrugged, feeling very little in the way of pity. “Welcome to the new era of the modern woman. We don't say maybe when we mean no. At least I don't. I love Wei. I am sorry that doesn't compute in your grand scheme of things. But I am not interested in you.”

  His lip curled into a sneer. One minute he was at the edge of my bed, watching me the way a cat watches a bird, and the next he was in front of me. Vampires moved fast, all of them, but he seemed to teleport. I felt the prick of his nails against my skin as he took my chin in his hand.

  “But I am interested in you.” His eyes seemed to burn into me. I could feel magic, hot and heavy pounding down on me. It took me a moment to understand that he was laying the creepy magics down and trying to make me feel how much he wanted me. Ew.

  If I had been someone else, anyone else, I might have fallen victim to that hypnotic gaze of his. But I was a necromancer, and their mind tricks, even those of Vlad himself, just didn't work on me. I screwed up my face to show how much I wasn't interested. “Tough.”

  I think he finally got it. His hand squeezed and I felt the bones in my jaw creak. It vibrated strangely in my ears. “I do not think you fully understand the depth of your position. My life depends on the creature you spawn. This can be gentle, a mutual pleasure, or not. I leave the choice in your hands.”

  Anger surged around me. I knew exactly what he was threatening and I was not cool with it. I opened myself up to my magic in a way I don't think I ever had before. It was, as it had always been, like a door opening in my mind, but more organic than that. It was my mind opening, my spirit, my soul. It wasn't just a part of me the way my hair was, or even my eye color, or my skin. Those things fell out, got scrubbed off, or changed with time. This was something else. Something deep inside that was as much a part of me as my love of comic books and the pride I had at getting through the boss level in that vampire game I like. It was my love of broken-in boots and jeans that fit just right. This was me in the way that time couldn't change.

  I was a Necromancer and he was a vampire.

  I slapped him. I slapped him hard. It had all the effect of hitting a marble statue. Pain radiated from my palm to my wrist and up. But I didn't care. He had crossed that line between threats that made me roll my eyes and threats that made me mad. He gave me a smile, amused by my attempt at hitting him, and then the magic flowed down my arm, pushing back the pain. It was a chaotic burst of arcane power, that slammed into him like a fist. His head jerked suddenly to the side and he flew back several inches.

  “Back. Off.” I snapped.

  When he looked at me, the beauty of his face had disappeared. His teeth were long and sharp in his mouth. The skin stretched over his forehead until it was more like a saphead. I could see the veins standing out beneath his skin like a tapestry. It wasn't pretty, not like it was with Anja. He hissed at me. I wrapped my magic around me like a glove.

  “This is my choice to make.” My voice reverberated through the room with power. “Not yours. You cannot, you will not touch me.”

  He lunged at me and I threw my hands out. A shield wove around me, invisible but tangible. He slammed against it impotently. I felt his power though. It was, I hated to admit, impressive. He was the first of his kind.

  “You will be mine.”

  “The hell I will.”

  He slammed again. The Shield held, but I wasn't sure that it would forever. It didn't crack. It wasn't glass, but it seemed to vibrate ar
ound me, and when it went steady again it wasn't half so powerful feeling.

  “I will not die for your prudish morality.”

  I laughed bitterly. “If you think that's the problem, you are out of touch. Let me out of here. Let me go find Wei.”

  He sneered, and dragged one clawed finger down my shield. It didn't make a sound, but a sensation. As if I were the chalkboard and him the nail. I could feel it in my teeth. “You would go to him when you could have me.”

  “Duh.”

  He withdrew his hand, and his face slowly turned back into the vampire that I was a little more familiar with. “He is dead.”

  I shook my head once. “No, he isn't.”

  His eyes bore into mine. “You love him?”

  It was a question, so I answered it. “Yes.”

  “And you believe he loves you.”

  This was more like a statement, but I answered it anyway. “Yes.”

  He sighed, and this time he looked at me with pity. “I have known Wei for a thousand years. I have never known a more stubborn and determined person in all of my time walking this grand earth. If the love between you is true...as you so obviously believe, he would not be away from you now. He would have removed his own foot to be back at your side. Not even Zane could stop him.”

  And then he turned to smoke and vanished. I hadn't known that a vampire could do that. I'd never seen it before, but there he went. But that wasn't what had me sliding down the wall.

  Was he right? I knew Wei too, and stubborn was definitely a word I associated with him. Determined, well, yes...he was that too. Was Vlad, who had known him literally a thousand times longer than I had, right? Maybe Wei didn't love me. Just because I cared about him didn't mean he cared about me.

  The desire to curl back up on the bed and forget about the world began to sink down around me.

  I shook my head. No, I had felt it. I had literally felt his love for me. It felt like years ago, but it wasn't. A month? Six weeks? Not even. I shook my head and gave up trying to figure out the timeline of my own life and focused on what had mattered. Wei loved me, and he had loved me before I had loved him.

  I had to get out of here. For the second time, I started pushing every spot on the walls, trying to find some kind of secret button. Not even a smidgen of luck. Everything felt so wrong, so desperately wrong. Tears threatened to spring out of my eyes and that just made me so mad. I was done with crying. I had been crying too much and I totally did not want that. I got mad, and, for lack of a better term, I flipped out.

  I hated that everything around me looked so nice and neat when I felt so wrong, so I just started breaking stuff. Some stuff I broke with my hands, some with magic. I can't remember it clearly. It was almost like I was watching myself go nuts rather than being inside of my body. I broke the television, the bookshelf, I threw books across the room and I kicked the mattress off the bed.

  This was a jail, no matter how pretty, and no one was coming to rescue me. I was angry, I was hurt, and when I finally came down off that mad angry high I was exhausted. I curled up in a pile of sheets and fell asleep against the mattress, rather than on it.

  I had no idea how long passed. When I woke up I grabbed a yogurt and a bottle of water from the fridge, ate both, didn't bother throwing anything away. I read a book that hadn't been destroyed, made a sandwich, drank more water and went back to sleep. Without the sun or a video game that tracked my played hours, or even a television, I had no idea how much time passed. It just did. My life, for who knew how long, became a cycle of wake up, eat, distract myself, and go back to sleep.

  Vlad visited again, it went about as well as the first time with a few scathing remarks about how good of a housewife I was. I made a rude gesture in response because I didn't really see a reason to oblige his sexism with words. He was still certain that he would make the best father for my child, but he wasn't stupid enough to try to attack me again. And when I had tried to attack him he did that vanishing act on me.

  I did, however, realize that he wasn't getting into my room through a door, exactly. He was turning into mist and going through walls. Neat trick. But it wasn't going to help me. And on the third visit, when he managed to bring food with him through the mist, I realized that I wasn't going to get out as I had originally planned.

  You can bet there was another angry rampage happening after that. I yelled and I screamed and I threw things. And then I got mad at myself for going crazy. Weird, right? I looked down at myself, holding the dwindling bottle of expensive shampoo that I had been intent on throwing and realized that this kind of anger? It wasn't the productive kind. It was impotent and pitiful and I was tired of being those two things. I needed a new plan, and I needed it now.

  When I turned back to the bed Maahes was there.

  “Well hello there, you useless feline,” I said with as much affection as I could manage, given that I was shaking. I plopped down on the chair, and he joined me a moment later. His weight was comforting. I began to pet my fingers through his ghostly fur. “What is with people wanting to trap me?” I asked, not expecting an answer. He rolled over and stretched, offering up the super soft belly.

  I sat there for a long moment, trying to come up with a plan that didn't involve me digging beneath the house.

  “I need to get out of here, Maahes,” I said absently. “I need to get out and get all of this...done.”

  Maahes stretched out and hopped off of my lap. I thought that he was abandoning me until he started to sniff around different corners of the room. And then, in the way of a ghost cat, his slender body pushed through a wall.

  “Maahes?” I asked, knowing I sounded pathetic. Sure, I was surrounded by a junk food dream and had books and video games aplenty, but I seriously did not want to be alone again.

  Then as if by magic, a part of the wall pushed open. Maahes stood there, looking up at me expectantly.

  “Holy crap, what did you just do?” I asked the cat.

  He continued to sit there, looking up at me with feline bemusement. I jumped up from the bed and nearly scampered over to the newly revealed door. It was deeper than I thought. Also, it was merely one of a pair of doors. There were two doors, with about a foot of space between them. There was a switch on either side. Someone would have to be a vampire who could do the smoke thing, or a ghost, to get to them.

  I flipped the switch closer to the other door and it swung open to reveal a hallway that was alien and familiar all at once. I knew by the structure and styling that it was a part of the mansion, but it was somewhere I had never been before. The walls, the same wood as everywhere else, were bare of Dmitri's art, or Alan's elegant touches, or even Wei's carpentry.

  “Alright Maahes,” I said softly, as if afraid someone was going to hear me, “lead the way.”

  He did. I wasn't sure if I was amused or surprised or a little of both. The cat tail curled high into the air in the shape of a question mark and Maahes trotted down the long hallway, leading me out.

  If it sounds like I was cucumber calm, I wasn't. My heart was pounding so hard that I was pretty sure I could see my pulse going through my eyes. I was happy I was wearing socks, not shoes. My feet made almost no sound as I slunk from one end of the hallway to the other, looking for a way out.

  The last time that I had to break out of anywhere I'd had a friend, or at least an accomplice. This time it was just me and my ghost cat trying not to make any noise. Okay, I was the one trying not to make any noise. Maahes did not have that problem. Ghost feet didn't make much sound. Not even when we finally made our way into familiar territory.

  Everything was exactly as I remembered it and different all at the same time. I still had no idea how long I had been trapped in that room, but it was long enough that the mansion had been redecorated.

  The warmth of Dmitri's artwork had been replaced by those antique portrait paintings that you see in old castles. Most of them were of him. Some showed him on horseback, some in armor, some on thrones. The clothes changed
with the times, he didn't. The others were of his wives and daughters. Most were classy, and a pretty significant amount were naked. Even his daughters. Gross.

  There were absolutely no pictures of Wei, or any of the sons. That sparked a sick feeling in my stomach. Or maybe that was the adrenaline mixing with the fact that I hadn't had what you might call a proper meal in what felt like forever.

  I ignored it, and tried to ignore the fact that it wasn't just the pictures that were missing. The charming touches of Alan's decorating skills were just as absent, leaving the mansion feeling cold.

  Out of instinct I made my way towards the kitchen. I had spent a lot of time there when I had been living in the house. Not just because I was human, but because food was pretty much the best thing ever. As I approached I heard noises.